AN: So this is just a one shot. It was written according to the prompt of an anonymous person on Tumblr, but I've tweaking a thing or two here and there. I hope I've done their "vision" justice while making it my own.
I am giving you a trigger warning for miscarriage.
I'm also giving you a probable tissue warning.
Only the first and last section, both marked PRESENT, are actually "present" to the story. All other sections are "flashbacks".
I hope you enjoy. Let me know what you think!
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PRESENT
It was easy to imagine, since imagination allowed everything to be just as you might want it to be, that by now the entire state of Georgia was probably nothing more than a thick, dense web of Cherokee Roses growing wild. They weren't signs of lost children to be found. They weren't signs of hope. They were simply signs, perhaps, of loss and of the importance of overcoming that loss…because from every tear there grew a flower.
And the world had certainly known enough tears since it had been turned upside down on its head.
Daryl imagined that the state they'd left so long ago was overrun, and since his feet would likely never tread on Georgia soil again, there was nothing to prove him wrong.
At least in his mind's eye he could imagine that, if it wasn't completely covered, there were vast patches growing just to cover those that they'd left behind, those that just couldn't make it.
Now their lives were very different. They were so different, in fact, that the lives they'd lead back then seemed as distance and separated from them as the lives that they'd lived before the turn. When they looked back, or at least when Daryl looked back, it was easy to believe that he was older than he even was because he'd lived so many lives.
Or maybe those who had made it this long were somehow immortal. Maybe they'd slipped, somehow, their mortal coils and they were simply caught in some kind of purgatory where they would forever roam what was left of the Earth.
Because, by now, even the Dead that had rambled about were scarce and it was hard to believe they'd been as plentiful as they'd been, possibly roaming the world over.
It was hard, too, to imagine that there was even a world out there. It had been so long since he'd been farther beyond the walls of their home "town" that he could almost be convinced that they'd made the rest of the world up. It had disappeared as surely as everything else that had been part of the lives that were only part of legend and memory now.
He was sure, though, that if Georgia did exist, the roses still bloomed there.
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She had buried her daughter. She had buried the children that she'd taken as "hers". She'd carried that secret with her for months until, upon Tyreese's death, she'd felt that she could share it with Daryl. She shared it with no one else, out of respect for the dead, but she'd shared it with him. And he'd held her, comforted her, and done everything he could to convince of her what she already believed. She'd done the right thing. She'd done the only thing that she could do.
She'd never doubted that, though. She'd done the only thing that she could do and she didn't lose sleep at night over what she had to do. She didn't lose sleep because she felt guilty for her actions. It was never guilt that had kept her up.
It had been simply knowing that they lived in world where that kind of thing was the kind of thing that she had to do which had kept her tossing and turning well until dawn.
Terminus shook them.
Head for D.C. Seek the cure. Find a life we used to know. Go back to the way that things had once been. These were the things they heard over and over again when they huddled, trying to figure out what the best plan really was, and tried to collect what was left of their hearts and their minds.
Carol felt like she was maybe one of the only ones who realized that there was no going back. Abraham could make speeches about cures and restoration of the world. Rick could pontificate for days on the fact that everyone could come back from what they'd done, likely only seeking to believe that he too could come back from that which kept him awake at night, but Carol knew that they couldn't go back…not really.
She couldn't imagine herself, not ever again, living what might have been a normal life.
But, if that's what was to come, she would accept it. She would adapt to that, because at this point it would take adapting, just as she'd adapted to the world that had taken three innocent girls right out of a mother's arms. She knew, now, that she was made to adapt.
What she hadn't been ready for, though, as they were holed up in an abandoned housing development several months after Terminus fell, finally deciding that moving on was best for them and there was nothing left in the life that they were leading there, was to find that there were things happening to her that she had believed would never happen again.
She hid the evidence, at first. She hid it as best she could. She covered herself in loose clothes and she fought the nausea and she powered on. She refused to accept what she saw as weakness in herself. She refused to accept what she saw as something that simply couldn't be.
They didn't have the resources for this. She didn't have the strength for it. And this wasn't the world for it.
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Daryl knew that something was different about her, but he didn't know what it was for a while. By the time that he'd really started to figure it out, there was nothing she could do to hide it. They were working all day, every day, to prepare for their move forward, and the nights they spent desperately trying to turn five hours of sleep into enough to get them through the next day, and that was only if they were lucky enough not to have night watch.
He'd slept beside her, but it had been so long since they'd had any privacy that he simply hadn't noticed the changes that she'd been trying to make.
Until the night that, on a run alone, they had eaten their shared dinner of a can of beans and decided to trade some of their precious moments of sleep for time spent in the warmth of each other's arms.
His realization of her little secret, though, had quickly changed his plans for how they were spending their time. Stripped before him in the semi darkness of the house, Carol lie on the bed and Daryl covered the small swell of her stomach with his hand.
"You didn't tell me?" He asked.
She stared at him, her hands coming up for her fingers to trail through his hair.
"I didn't expect it to last this long," she said. "I didn't…"
She stopped, obviously aware of how hurt he was. She would think that he was hurt for her not telling him, and that was part of it, but he was hurt too that it was something that she'd carried this long without letting him help carry it.
That's what they'd agreed on, or at least that's what he'd thought was understood between them. From the time they'd wholeheartedly declared their love for one another throughout however long their lifetime together might be, they would share each other's burdens.
And this one was entirely theirs, but Daryl hadn't been carrying his end of the deal at all.
"Daryl," Carol said softly, her chin quivering slightly as she brought one of the hands from its busy work down to cup his jaw, "please don't be angry? Every day I've thought would be…the last day…and I feel like I've just been waiting."
The pleading in her voice reminded Daryl that she was sincere. Anything she did, anything she'd ever done was never with malice in her heart. Carol, out of all of them, was probably the least inclined to malice of any kind. What she did was always done with the best of intentions.
She had wanted to save him from it, when the last day came. She had been willing to carry the pain with her, alone, just to spare him from it.
He kissed her softly and worked his hands under her, gathering her up and against his body. She came willingly, wrapping her arms around him, and he reminded himself of how wonderful it felt to have her there in his arms and how many times he'd feared that was something he would never experience.
"You shoulda told me," he said. "Shoulda let me…"
He broke off. No one needed guilt these days for anything. Everyone carried enough heaviness in their hearts to last a lifetime, there wasn't room for more.
"We'll love him 'til the last day, right?" Daryl said. "You and me? Together? We'll just…love him 'til the last day…"
He released her a little so that he wasn't speaking into the soft skin at the crook of her neck and lowered her back to the old mattress that they were making a bed out of for the night.
She dropped her hands, as he lowered her, to rest her palms against the muscles of his arms. She offered him something that he got, these days, only when they were alone…one of her sweetest smiles.
"You're right," she said. "I'm sorry. I should have told you. And…we will. We'll do what we have to do and we'll love him until the last day…together."
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Daryl begged her to "take it easy". He begged her to "eat more". He begged her for all the things that maybe the world had once allowed a woman in her condition, but it wasn't a luxury that they had these days. Their group was smaller and it suffered for its size. Everything they did was one step forward and two steps backward.
They clashed with other people sometimes, people that seemed to pop up out of the woodworks like beings from their nightmares. They fought with Walkers when hoards seemed to move around them like migrating beasts. They searched for food that they couldn't find and hungered for food they couldn't grow because they were trying to move, each day their movement slowed or stopped by some event or another.
There wasn't time to "be in her condition." There weren't resources for it.
They were short hands at every turn and she couldn't sit, idly back, and rob the group of yet another set of hands. They were short food and she couldn't take more than her share, or even her whole share, when she knew that someone was going without because of it.
It had been a long time since she'd been a burden. It had been a long time since she'd felt like a burden. Now she wasn't going back to being one.
Not for something that she knew was biding time anyway.
And she tried to think of it that way, because then? Then it simply wouldn't hurt. That's what she told herself. If she ignored the fluttering she felt…if she ignored everything about it…then it wouldn't hurt when it was gone. She wouldn't let herself get attached to that which she simply knew she couldn't keep.
This wasn't forever. She wasn't a forever kind of mother. She was, just like with the girls that she'd lost, simply holding this for a little while…and then it would be time for her to give it up, just as surely as she'd given up the others.
And the worst part, maybe, was that she knew it would be just the same as before. Life perpetually drew them forward at such a speed that there wouldn't be time to think. There wouldn't be time to mourn.
It was better, even if Daryl didn't realize it, to try to keep it as far from her mind as possible.
Because this wouldn't last either.
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Daryl hadn't known what to do at all. He'd been nothing short of overcome at the whole thing.
Because even though Carol reminded him every day when he pressed his palm over her belly, and every night when he kissed the tight little bump that marked the location of their child, that they were just loving him until the last day, Daryl had somehow managed to make himself believe, even without trying, that the last day would magically be a day that they'd never see.
He would love them, perhaps until their last days, just as they'd love each other.
And he knew how foolish he'd been when, surrounded by others who knew very little of what to do, he'd realized that the last day had come…and he was stuck, praying for the first time in so long he was sure that God didn't even know who he was, delivering his child on dirty towels in the back of a an old bus that they'd barely gotten running and could only keep going when luck was going their way.
He prayed because he didn't want to lose Carol and nothing about the pregnancy had been easy on her, even if she'd hid it well from everyone else. He prayed because he didn't know what to expect and he knew that she was nowhere near ready to actually deliver the child. He prayed because he didn't know if his heart and her heart could handle it being the last day.
Because, for all Carol did to try to convince him and herself that she held no belief at all the child might survive, Daryl knew that the thought of losing it moved her to tears at night. He had woken more than once and heard her mourning the child before it was gone…heard her mourning the others…and heard her trying, with soft words to herself, to apologize to them all for what she felt was a failure on her part to keep them all safe.
She thought she could hide it from him, but there was nothing about her that he wouldn't eventually find out, no matter how hard she tried to keep it to herself.
When the baby fell free from her body, a girl so tiny that she nearly fit in the palm of his hand, Daryl had expected it to have already departed from the world. He expected her to be gone before they even met her. Their time with her passed.
But she wasn't. She was, although he might venture to say loosely, holding onto life.
So he'd wrapped her in one of the dirty towels, all they had to offer at the moment, and he'd tucked her into the crook of Carol's arm for her to let the baby know, in however much time it might be given, what it was to have a mother's love.
And somehow? Somehow the little thing survived the time it took for Daryl to clean her mother up, tending to her gently himself because he didn't want anyone else touching her…he didn't want anyone touching her who didn't know what it was to love her like he did.
So then, in the tight space, Daryl made himself fit and he held Carol while she held the baby that seemed to be gone already if it wasn't for the very faint proof that her underdeveloped lungs were still struggling for a hold on things.
And together, they waited. They touched her tiny body, gently ran tiny hands between fingertips, and carefully trailed fingers over tiny cheeks. They kissed her and rocked her and held her, and together, they saw her into the world and they quietly saw her back out again.
And when the breaths that had been faint stopped completely, Daryl thought his heart would explode and he thought that he heard Carol suck all the air out of the entire space before she let go in the sob that shook her body as she leaned against him, letting him hold her through it.
But life? Their life? It was a life that was constantly moving forward and it was a life in which things had to be done…hard things…and no one knew that better than Carol. So she gave herself relatively little time to pull herself together and then she passed Daryl the weightless bundle.
"You know what you have to do," she said. "I can do it…if you can't."
Daryl shook his head at her.
"I can do it," he said even as he got out of the tight spot that had his legs numb from their lack of blood flow, or maybe they were simply numb from everything he was feeling at the moment. "I'll be back for you."
He kissed her, bumping his nose against hers quickly as he pulled away, her face wet enough that she left his wet…or maybe it had been wet before and he'd simply failed to notice.
"I love you," she whispered. "I'm sorry."
"Love you too," he said. "Don't be sorry…I'ma love you too…'til the last day."
He offered her the bundle quickly, one last time, and let her kiss the still cheek. As much as it pained him to have to do what he knew he had to do, he wanted to do it before it was too late. So as soon as she kissed the cheek one last time, he wrapped the bundle up again and forced his shaky legs to make the trip off the bus as quickly as possible, palming his knife even before he hit the gravel of the highway or addressed anyway waiting around outside in their makeshift camp, looking toward him like there was something to see there.
But there was nothing to see. There was only Daryl doing what had to be done.
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He'd carried her out as gently as he could, despite her insistence that she could walk, and he'd eased her down on the bank to sit with him while he filled in the small hole that held the tiny body. Even if she'd tried to tell him that she didn't want to go, he would have taken her with him.
And she went anyway, because he needed her there.
And she needed to be beside him.
Because for all the preparation that she'd tried to make? For all the times she'd tried to convince herself that she could make it simply not hurt? It hadn't worked.
Her heart was breaking now as surely as it had broken before. It reminded her, really, that hearts were funny things. No matter how many times they broke to a point of being irreparable, of feeling like they couldn't go on, somehow they always managed to bring themselves back together…all the more ready to love and break again.
When the hole was filled and the dirt was packed, and Daryl had disappeared a moment without explanation to return with ripped up pieces of a Cherokee Rose vine, out of bloom for the moment, bare briars to anyone who didn't know what they were looking for, and had partially buried it in the soft dirt to take root, he sat on the bank beside Carol and wrapped an arm around her, pulling her into him.
"It'll take root," Daryl said. "It'll grow…cover the grave? Yeah? Like Sophia…cover the state one day. All a' Georgia. Roses bloomin' everywhere…"
Carol rubbed her face into his shirt, the pain in her heart enough to mask the pain of her body.
"I wish I didn't feel like they were all blooming for me," she said softly. "For mine…"
He was silent for a moment.
"They bloom for the tears," he said.
"And I've cried too many," Carol said. She hated to feel sorry for herself, and she honestly spent very little time indulging in something so petty as self-pity, but even Daryl was allowing her the moment as she sat, shivering in the cold beside him, wrapped in a tattered blanket he'd found, her feet resting on the fresh grave of her last child.
"No," he said. "Never too many…not when they're Mama's tears…not when they're tears of love. I hate that you…got reason to cry 'em, but don't you ever feel guilty for them."
They stayed there through the night, undisturbed by Walkers thanks to Glenn and a few others that had taken silent watch over them, a few feet away, and in the morning, Daryl gathered Carol up and helped her back to the bus where she would do whatever healing her body needed to do while they moved on.
And out the window of the bus, leaned silently in her seat with Daryl sitting one space ahead of her to give her more room, Carol watched the landscape roll by…and when she saw, for the last time, the Georgia State sign, she closed her eyes and said a quiet goodbye to all the lives she'd left in Georgia.
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PRESENT
Daryl thought that they'd be happy with the fish he was bringing in, even if it wasn't all that much, but he imagined that it would go well right alongside the fare brought in by all the other men that offered up their morning to go out searching for it.
For years they'd been living this way, everyone contributing what they could to the community. For years they'd been relatively safe, until Daryl could remember deaths by natural causes being far more prevalent in the "recent" deaths than anything Walker related, or even people related when it wasn't purely accidental.
Sometimes, too, he thought about it all. He thought about the fact that maybe, had things happened differently…had they found Sophia before, had they had some kind of chance with Mikka or Lizzie, had they made it here before the baby that they never even had the chance to name had come into the world…he'd be going home to a house full of women by now.
His house wasn't full, at least not full of people. These days, it was simply he and Carol in the house.
But his house, if not full of people, was at least full of love. There was that to be thankful for. It was full of love and full of the promise that the love that they shared there would last. It would last right on up until the last day.
And sometimes, every now and again, the sadness creeped in for both of them, but they fought it together. Even when it was hard, and even when it choked one or the other of them, they fought it together.
And even when everyone else around them forgot?
They remembered that the roses still bloomed in Georgia.